The Late, Great Democratic Party

During the past eight years of Obamanomics, economic
growth has stagnated

By Stephen Moore
WashingtonTimes.com

Illustration on the stagnation of the Democrat party
by Alexander Hunter/The Washington Times

This week the Democrats officially coronate the
battered Hillary
Clinton as the torch bearer for the party. She
has slouched to the finish line. She is tired and
the country is tired of her. Sorry, Democrats, no
do-overs. You’re stuck with her.

But it isn’t just Hillary who
is out of touch and in tragic decline, it’s the
wholeDemocratic
Party. My friends at the American Enterprise
Institute reported last week that the Democratic
platform is silent on “economic growth.” Maybe that
is because across the country during the past eight
years of Obamanomics economic growth has been
silent.

This is an exaggeration, of course, but not much of
one. We have had 2 percent growth under President
Obama, but that’s an economy treading water. It’s
sister-kissing growth that, yes, has thankfully kept
us out of recession, but doesn’t lead to much if any
rise in living standards.

Just as Mr. Obama refuses to utter the words
“Islamic terrorism,” now the whole
party can’t seem to bring itself to endorse
“economic growth.” For the left growth isn’t really
the goal. They want redistribution of wealth.

The language of a party platform doesn’t matter
much, if at all. But if you’re not for growth, you
probably aren’t going to produce it, just as If
you’re not even trying to get in shape, it’s a good
bet you’re not going to shed those extra 16 pounds.

Amazingly, the last great growth hawk of the Democratic
Party of modern times, John F. Kennedy, ran
against Republican Richard Nixon in 1960 on the
issue of the “growth deficit.” The economy in the
1950s was fairly prosperous and much more so than
over the last eight years. But JFK said we can “do
bettah” and convinced Americans we could see much
faster wage gains with greater opportunities.

Through tax cuts and free trade the JFK era sparked
growth rates of 4, 5, and even 6 percent in the
go-go ‘60s until LBJ crashed the economy with New
Deal welfare statism. Now we have this weird
austerity-worship that has taken over the party.
The rich and businesses are portrayed as scalpers
and scoundrels. And employers are exploiters in the
“you didn’t build that” mindset. Radical
environmentalists, a bedrock of the party,
are anti-growth and believe that when people get
richer, it’s worse for the planet. (They should go
live in India or Mexico City and see how well the
environment is doing there.) They ridicule what they
call “growth-mania” on the right. Human economic
activity, they warn, is causing catastrophic global
warming.

Perhaps this explains the litany of economic
failures during the Obama years. We have had $8
trillion of new debt, minimum wage increases,
Obamacare, an $800 billion stimulus plan with
“shovel-ready” projects, tax increases on the rich,
more than $100 billion in green energy subsidies,
auto company and union pension bailouts,
reregulation of the financial industry and banks,
and a Fed that has manufactured near zero short term
interest rates for seven years with up to $4
trillion of bond acquisitions. All of these were
designed primarily to redistribute income, and so is
it a shock that they haven’t produced growth?

Poor Hillary
Clinton has the unenviable task of persuading
Americans to open up wide and swallow four more
years of this swill.

Here’s a question that Donald Trump and Mike Pence
should be asking every day: what would Hillary offer
that is any different? She is promising minimum wage
increases, tax hikes on the rich, and more
infrastructure spending. This is new? This is
change?

The left’s defense of growth anemia is that 2
percent growth is the new normal, so get used to it.
Mr. Obama’s first economic guru Larry Summers calls
this secular stagnation that is here to stay. This
past week at a Politico economic forum I made the
claim that we could have 4 percent growth easily and
the jaws of the media dropped in collective
disbelief as if I suggested that we could suspend
the laws of gravity.

Actually 4 percent growth isn’t that hard to
achieve. A pro-America energy production policy,
including putting coal back in business, could
produce $150 billion more output each year. Another
percentage point of growth could come from tax
reform with reductions in business taxes to spur
investment and hiring, according to the folks at the
Tax Foundation.

But Democrats will never get us there because they
aren’t even trying. They will celebrate 2 percent
growth — the weakest recovery in half a century — as
a glittering achievement. The party that
once stood with the working class now says Americans
have to work more and settle for less. That’s not
just wrong; it’s sad.

• Stephen Moore is an economic consultant with
Freedom Works and a senior economic adviser to the
Donald Trump campaign.